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Australia Votes as Labor Government Struggles to Survive Australia’s Labor Party Dealt Stinging Blow in Election
(about 7 hours later)
SYDNEY, Australia — Australians went to the polls Saturday in a contest that pits Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Labor Party, which is hoping for a fresh mandate after a tumultuous six years in power, against a conservative Liberal-National coalition seeking to ride a wave of voter dissatisfaction into power. SYDNEY, Australia — Voters on Saturday delivered a stinging defeat to the Labor Party led by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, bringing an end to six tumultuous years of leadership and ushering into power a strong conservative Liberal-National coalition.
Mr. Rudd faces a formidable opponent in Tony Abbott, who has dispatched two prime ministers during his four-year run as opposition leader. Mr. Rudd, who served as prime minister from 2007 to 2010, returned to the leadership in June after a nearly two-year campaign by his supporters culminated in a party coup that ousted the country’s first female prime minister, Julia Gillard. The opposition leader, Tony Abbott, who made his name as a relentless critic of the policies of Mr. Rudd and his predecessor, Julia Gillard, is now in line to become Australia’s 27th prime minister when he is sworn in next week by Governor General Quentin Bryce.
Polls have suggested that Mr. Rudd was facing an uphill battle in convincing voters to return him to the leadership he had fought so hard to regain from Ms. Gillard. And on Friday Mr. Rudd received a setback when all but one major daily owned by Fairfax Media, the normally left-leaning publisher of The Sydney Morning Herald and the nation’s second largest newspaper publisher, endorsed Mr. Abbott for prime minister. Only Fairfax’s Melbourne daily, The Age, stuck by Mr. Rudd in the contest. Mr. Rudd, who served as prime minister from 2007 to 2010, returned to leadership in June after a nearly two-year campaign by his supporters culminated in a party coup that ousted Ms. Gillard, the first woman to be Australia’s prime minister.
The socially conservative Mr. Abbott, however, has long struggled to connect with voters and most polls had him either equal to or less popular than Mr. Rudd heading into the vote. There is a strong sense that, if he prevails in Saturday’s contest, he will be entering office without a strong personal mandate. But the Labor Party, which abandoned Ms. Gillard in the hopes of averting a landslide loss, was ultimately unable to shake the impression that it was more focused on personal feuds than pressing issues like the slowing of Australia’s mining-driven economy and the record number of asylum seekers trying to reach the country in dangerous and overcrowded boats.
But Mr. Abbott appeared relaxed after casting his ballot early Saturday morning at a beachfront polling station in Sydney’s affluent northern suburbs. He even poked fun at his oft-mocked penchant for the tight swimming trunks known colloquially as “budgie smugglers” – named after the budgerigar, a small Australian parrot. Mr. Rudd conceded defeat less than four hours after polls closed on Australia’s east coast, and a mere half-hour after polls closed on the west coast. By then, it was apparent that Labor was headed for a loss.
“You will be pleased to know I am in a suit — not in budgie smugglers,” Mr. Abbott told Nine Network television after casting his vote. “I wish I was out in the waves. It is a nice swell for an elderly long boarder.” “I know that Labor hearts are heavy across the nation tonight, and as your prime minister and as your parliamentary leader of the great Australian Labor Party I accept responsibility,” Mr. Rudd, teary-eyed and flanked on stage by his wife, Therese Rein, said in his concession speech. “I gave it my all, but it was not enough for us to win.”
Mr. Rudd, by contrast, was at the center of a chaotic scene at St. Paul’s Church in Brisbane, where a group of protesters loudly mocked him as he arrived to vote in the early afternoon. Confusion at the polling station – reportedly as a result of the campaign having given little advance notice of his arrival – led to a crush of journalists and campaign workers inside the church. Mr. Rudd, who retained his seat in Queensland State, added that he would not seek the Labor Party leadership in the new Parliament.
The Labor Party, which dumped Ms. Gillard in the hopes of averting a landslide loss, has struggled to shake the impression that it is more focused on personal feuds than pressing issues like the slowing of Australia’s mining-driven economy and the record number of asylum seekers trying to reach the country in dangerous and overcrowded boats. “I have been honored to serve as your prime minister and as your party’s leader,” he said. “But there comes a time when you know you’ve given it your all and a time for the party to further renew its leadership for the future. For me, that time is now.”
Whatever the outcome of the election, the end of the campaign will surely be welcomed by a weary electorate. The bitter and feisty contest, whose start was officially declared by Mr. Rudd last month, has effectively been under way since January, when Ms. Gillard announced, unusually early, that the vote would be held in September. The Australian Electoral Commission reported that Labor had captured 54 seats in the next Parliament compared with 91 seats for the coalition with 94.5 percent of votes counted, a major swing in the 150-seat lower house. The two parties are separated by a razor-thin margin in the current Parliament, with Labor ruling in a minority government with 72 seats against the coalition’s 73 seats.
That sense of exhaustion was evident Saturday afternoon at a polling station in the leafy Sydney suburb of Leichhardt – a traditionally strong area for Labor. A handful of voters trickled in to cast their ballots under the high steeples of the local town hall, and none expressed excitement for their party’s leadership. Mr. Abbott, a former Roman Catholic seminarian and Rhodes scholar, declared Australia “open for business” again in a victory speech to jubilant supporters at a Sydney hotel.
Matt Rogers, a 32-year-old mortgage broker, said that he had voted for the Liberal Party despite his misgivings about Mr. Abbott. He hopes, however, that the coalition will bring stability back to government after the leadership crises of the Labor years. “I now look forward to forming a government that is competent, that is trustworthy and which purposefully and steadfastly and methodically sets about delivering on our commitments to you, the Australian people,” he said.
But in one last thinly veiled swipe at the internal strife that had proved so disastrous for the Labor Party, he pledged to listen more closely to the voice of the people in leadership questions.
“It is the people of Australia who determine the government and the prime ministership of this country, and you will punish anyone who takes you for granted,” Mr. Abbott said.
Mr. Abbott will now begin trying to put in place major revisions to government policy, starting with his promise to repeal Ms. Gillard’s central policy achievement — an emissions trading scheme that is the world’s second largest, after the European Union. That policy ultimately proved toxic for Labor, and its repeal figured heavily in the coalition’s electoral vision.
Although Mr. Abbott is unlikely to radically alter his country’s close relationship with the United States in the long term, in the short term he has been far less vocal than Mr. Rudd in his support for an American-led strike against the Syrian government over a reported chemical weapons attack in that country’s two-year civil war.
Earlier this week Mr. Rudd accused Mr. Abbott of naively viewing international relations like “a John Wayne western,” after Mr. Abbott was widely quoted as saying that the Syrian conflict was not a case of "goodies versus baddies" but "baddies versus baddies."
Polls had suggested that Mr. Rudd was facing an uphill battle in persuading voters to return him to the leadership he had fought so hard to regain from Ms. Gillard. And on Friday Mr. Rudd received a setback when all but one major daily owned by Fairfax Media, the normally left-leaning publisher of The Sydney Morning Herald and the nation’s second-largest newspaper publisher, endorsed Mr. Abbott. Only Fairfax’s Melbourne daily, The Age, stuck by Mr. Rudd in the contest.
The socially conservative Mr. Abbott, however, has long struggled to connect with voters and most polls had him either equal to or less popular than Mr. Rudd heading into the vote. There is a sense that he will be entering office without a strong personal mandate.
A weary electorate will surely welcome the end of the campaign. The bitter and feisty contest, whose start was officially declared by Mr. Rudd last month, has effectively been under way since January, when Ms. Gillard announced, unusually early, that the vote would be held in September.
That sense of exhaustion was evident Saturday afternoon at a polling station in the leafy Sydney suburb of Leichhardt — a traditionally strong area for Labor. A handful of voters trickled in to cast their ballots under the high steeples of the local town hall, and none expressed excitement for their party’s leadership.
In a sign of the difficulties Mr. Abbott could face as he comes to office, Matt Rogers, a 32-year-old mortgage broker, said that he had voted for the Liberal Party despite his misgivings about its leader. He hopes, however, that the coalition will bring stability back to government after the leadership crises of the Labor years.
“Yeah, maybe not the most ideal of leaders for the Liberals,” he said with a laugh. “But I believe that you’re voting for a party and not just individuals.”“Yeah, maybe not the most ideal of leaders for the Liberals,” he said with a laugh. “But I believe that you’re voting for a party and not just individuals.”
But Alex Chapple, 56, said that it was precisely the leadership issue that had driven him to vote for the Labor Party this time around, after having voted for The Liberal Party in the previous election. A vote for Mr. Rudd was a vote from “my heart,” he said, and no amount of media coverage saying the election was lost would convince him that was the case.
“Don’t count him out,” he said. “You never know until the last breath.”